Psalm 9 Bible study: A high tower for the oppressed

The title reads, "For the Chief Musician. Set to “The Death of the Son.” A Psalm by David" (9:1). Then the psalm begins with I will, four times in the WEB: "I will give thanks to the LORD with my whole heart. I will tell of all your marvelous works" (9:1) (tap tell), and "I will be glad and rejoice in you. I will sing praise to your name, O Most High" (9:2). Then: "When my enemies turn back, they stumble and perish in your presence" (9:3), and the reason, "For you have maintained my just cause" (9:4). Here is what almost everyone misses: the promise to tell comes back in the middle of a plea. "Have mercy on me, LORD" (9:13), the psalmist asks, and "lift me up from the gates of death" (9:13), "that I may show all of your praise" (9:14). In Hebrew 9:1's tell and 9:14's show are one verb, safar, and both times all follows it: all your marvelous works, all of your praise.

Psalms 9:8→leads toActs 17:31

Psalm 9 says of the LORD, "He will judge the world in righteousness" (Psalm 9:8). In Athens Paul, who "preached Jesus and the resurrection" (Acts 17:18), stood in the middle of the Areopagus (Acts 17:22) and said that God "has appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness by the man whom he has ordained; of which he has given assurance to all men, in that he has raised him from the dead" (Acts 17:31). In the WEB, "judge the world in righteousness" is 9:8's wording, and no other Old Testament verse has it. But Paul names no Scripture, and in Hebrew the same words stand in two other psalms, where the WEB has "He will judge the world with righteousness" (Psalm 96:13, 98:9). So setting Acts 17:31 beside this psalm is a reading. One reading hears Paul announcing, in the psalm's words, by whom the LORD will judge the world: the man he raised from the dead. Another reads Paul speaking to the Athenians in words the psalms share, pointing to no one psalm, and reads 9:8 as the psalmist's praise of the LORD who judges. The psalm itself names no man by whom the LORD judges, and this line doesn't make the psalmist Jesus.

מִשְׂגָּבmisgavsay mis-GAV

Brown-Driver-Briggs: "secure height, retreat". Strong's: "properly, a cliff (or other lofty or inaccessible place); abstractly, altitude; figuratively, a refuge". "The LORD will also be a high tower for the oppressed; a high tower in times of trouble" (9:9): the verse has it twice. The Psalms have it 13 times in Hebrew, and this is the first. The WEB doesn't always give it as high tower: "The God of Jacob is our refuge" (Psalm 46:7) is this word. Psalm 18 has it with other names for the LORD: "my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my high tower" (Psalm 18:2).